


Closed

by myth_taken



Series: Can't Believe It's Not Canon [8]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 14:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11014923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myth_taken/pseuds/myth_taken
Summary: The story of Tara and Willow needed no words; it could be told with clothes, starting with a UCSD T-shirt and ending with bloodstains on a white top.--After Willow returns from England, she finds Tara's clothes in her closet.Spoilers for Season 6 "Seeing Red"





	Closed

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually semi-based on a dream I had. In the dream, Willow was on the top of a parking structure, laying Tara's clothes out on the concrete and crying over them. That specific scene didn't make it into here, but sadness over clothes definitely did. I considered saving it for femslash week, but I already wrote something for canon day, and femslash week should only be happy things. (I try not to write too much about Tara's death; I feel that it was a mistake for the show, and I try to celebrate her as a character. This is the first and hopefully last Tara death piece I will write.)
> 
> The spoiler warning is there because, while I have very complicated feelings about the end of Seeing Red, it was all the more powerful for my not expecting it.

Willow stood in the bedroom she had once shared with Tara, staring into the closet, trying to stop herself from crying. Tara’s clothes were all there, lined up like they had been when Tara had lived with Willow. Willow remembered Tara making a run to her dorm room hours before she died, bringing back whatever she could hold, but someone had obviously gotten the rest of her clothes and brought them back, placed them in the closet of the empty bedroom, and left them, untouched, for Willow to find. 

Now, Willow touched them: the dress Tara had worn when she sang to Willow, the UCSD shirt Tara had been wearing when they talked for the first time, the skirt she had worn the day Oz came back. The story of Tara and Willow needed no words; it could be told with clothes, starting with a UCSD T-shirt and ending with bloodstains on a white top. 

Tears running down her face, Willow started hanging her own clothes, placing them among Tara’s the same way they had been when Tara had been around to wear them. Willow had once organized the closet whenever she was stressed; if nothing else could be in order, the closet would be. Even when she was in the deepest throes of addiction, she organized the closet, albeit with more magic than Tara had approved of.

And now, Willow fell to organizing the closet again, pushing Tara’s clothes to one side, rearranging them by color, by type, and finally by memory, so that the UCSD shirt was on the left, and the black jacket she had worn when she came back to Willow was on the right, with everything else in between. Willow put her own clothes in between Tara’s-- the shirt from their first spell, the pants from their last coffee date, and everything in between. The few things she didn’t have a memory for were on the left, and the things she had gotten since Tara’s death were on the right.

Willow knew she had to move on. She knew that someday, she wouldn’t feel Tara’s death like a weight pressing on her shoulders. But she thought, maybe, if she kept Tara’s clothes in her closet, their lives might stay intertwined.


End file.
